Church of England abolishes law requiring churches to hold services every Sunday

More evidence of the decline of the once-mighty Church of England; as reported by Izzy Lyons of the London Daily Telegraph, February 23, 2019 (links in original):

Churches will no longer be legally required to conduct a service every Sunday after the General Synod has voted to end a law that has existed since the 17th century.

Canon laws, first passed in 1603 and updated most recently in 1964, stipulate that weekly Sunday services must take place in every church.

However vicars in rural parts of the country, who have been increasingly responsible for “up to 20 churches” in their area due to the decline in clergy, say they are unable to abide by the law and left with little choice but to break it.

In recent years growing numbers of parishes have held one combined Sunday worship where previously each church would have held separate services.

Whilst no vicar has been punished for breaking the canon, Thursday's changes mean that they can now conduct a single Sunday service for several congregations without having to seek written permission.

The Bishop of Willesden, the Rt Rev Pete Broadbent, who first suggested the changes three years ago, said it “clears the way for people to be honest.”

Admitting that weekly service “is a centuries old tradition”, Rev Broadbent said: “What we have been saying is that this canon does not work, it is out of date and we are operating differently in the countryside now.

“It cuts out the bureaucracy.

“This change merely reflects what has been practised for the past 20 years.”

The two laws that were amended include Canon B11, which requires morning and evening prayer to be “said or sung audibly in every parish church every Sunday”. This has now been amended to “in at least one church” in every group.

The second clause, known as Canon B14, previously required Holy Communion to be celebrated “in every parish church”. However, this has been substituted for “in at least one church in each benefice”.

The number of multi parish benefices - defined as a group of churches that are looked after by one priest - have grown significantly in the UK in the past 50 years.

According to figures from the Church of England’s Growth Research Programme, only 17 per cent of their parishes were in multi parish benefices in 1960.

By 2011 this figure had risen to 71 per cent - meaning 8,400 of the Church’s 12,500 parishes are now amalgamated.

"As the number of church attendees and stipendiary clergy has decreased over recent decades, parishes have been amalgamated to form multi-parish benefices,” the report stated in 2011.

In 2017, it was reported that the Church is increasingly turning to “self supporting priests” with weekday jobs such as doctors, writers, teachers, plumbers or farmers. Accounting for one in six clergy, the number of self-supporting priests increased from 2,091 in 2002 to 3,230 in 2016.

According to members of the Synod, the traditional canon law stipulating that weekly services must take place has been regularly broken by priests over the past several decades.

If a member of the clergy is believed to have deliberately broken the protocol, they would be made to face a disciplinary panel under the Clergy Discipline Measure that was passed in 2003. However, the Church is not aware of this ever happening.

Thursday's amendments were voted through almost unanimously by 20 Bishops, 92 Clergy and 118 Laity, with only two voting against the motion.

The Bishop of Salisbury, Nicholas Holtam, who governs a very rural patch, said: “Morning and Evening Prayer are the heartbeat of a church’s life.

“This change is a sensible step which matches resources to reality and gives encouragement to clergy and laity to hold services in one of the churches in a benefice each day.

“This will be much appreciated in rural areas where multi-parish benefices are a reality.”

A Church of England Spokesperson said: “Sunday worship continues to be central to the Church of England’s ministry. The recent adaptation is designed to make it easier for multi-church parishes who rotate services between a group of churches.

“This is often already the case in rural parishes where it is impractical to hold weekly services in every church. This reflects the movement over the past two hundred years of people from the country to cities.

“The Church of England now has a great variety of services throughout the week, with midweek services increasing in popularity.”